Designing Digital Finance Markets That Work for Women
Designing Digital Finance Markets That Work for Women
By Sinidu Fekadu and Hana Hailu
Ethiopia’s digital finance ecosystem is expanding rapidly. Mobile money accounts increased from 12.2 million in 2020 to 139.5 million in 2025, while mobile banking accounts rose from 9.1 million to 54 million during the same period, highlighting the scale and pace at which digital financial services are being adopted across the country (National Bank of Ethiopia, Digital Payments Strategy 2026–2030).
However, this rapid expansion has not translated into widespread economic empowerment—particularly for women. Even as overall access increases, women remain significantly less likely than men to use the full range of financial services, including savings, credit, and insurance. As a result, they are less able to leverage digital finance to strengthen their livelihoods, build assets, or enhance their economic resilience.
In many rural areas, the challenge begins even earlier. Digital infrastructure, connectivity, and reliable agent networks remain limited, while gaps in electricity, mobile coverage, and identification systems continue to constrain financial access. Expanding women’s use of digital financial services therefore requires addressing these foundational constraints alongside product innovation.
These challenges were the focus of the workshop “Empowering Women Through Tailored Digital Financial Solutions,” convened by FSD Ethiopia on November 27, 2025, in collaboration with ACCION, Village Enterprise, and Shega.
The session brought together regulators, financial institutions, innovators, and development partners to explore how Ethiopia’s digital financial system can better serve women. The dialogue highlighted that unlocking women’s participation in digital finance is not only a social objective but also a significant market opportunity.
Participants examined how demand-side barriers, supply-side incentives, and the enabling environment interact to shape women’s financial outcomes. A key takeaway from the workshop was the need for stronger coordination among market actors—financial institutions, fintechs, policymakers, and community organisations—to design solutions that respond to women’s diverse financial realities and translate rapid digital growth into meaningful economic inclusion.
Rapid growth, persistent gender gaps
Ethiopia’s digital financial sector has advanced significantly under the National Digital Payment Strategy. Non-bank providers now process transaction values exceeding cash payments, interoperable QR codes are improving convenience, and digital channels are lowering transaction costs.
However, market outcomes remain uneven, particularly along gender lines.Only 42 percent of women access formal financial services compared to 57 percent of men (Global Findex 2025). Women also account for a significantly smaller share of mobile money users, while men dominate digital transaction activity. Mobile phone ownership shows a similar disparity, with 65 percent of women owning a phone compared to 86 percent of men (GSMA 2025).
Beyond access, structural constraints persist. Women are still less likely to access credit, insurance uptake remains limited, and many digital products fail to reflect women’s income patterns, literacy levels, mobility constraints, or risk profiles.
Digital barriers compound these gaps. Lower levels of digital and financial literacy, limited smartphone ownership, and restricted access to mobile technologies continue to shape how women interact with digital services.
From a market systems perspective, these outcomes reflect deeper structural issues: weak incentives for providers to invest in women-centred design, limited gender-disaggregated data, low trust in formal finance, and coordination gaps between financial institutions, fintechs, regulators, and community-based actors. Without addressing these systemic constraints, the benefits of Ethiopia’s digital transformation will remain unevenly distributed.Why “gender-neutral” digital finance falls short
Evidence presented during the workshop showed that many financial service providers offer products labelled as “for women,” yet few are grounded in robust insights into women’s lived realities.
Assessment findings highlighted barriers such as lack of formal identification, distance to service points, literacy constraints, irregular income patterns, misconceptions about credit, and restrictive social norms that influence women’s financial decision-making power.
Participants also noted that treating women as a single market segment obscures critical differences between informal traders, women-led micro and small enterprises, rural savings group members, and first-time users of formal finance.
Without segmentation, providers often default to standard onboarding processes and product structures that inadvertently favour male customers.
At the same time, many financial institutions still view women-focused financial products primarily as social impact or corporate social responsibility initiatives, rather than commercially viable market opportunities.
This represents both an inclusion failure and a market inefficiency. Global evidence shows that women customers often demonstrate stronger repayment discipline, higher loyalty, and greater long-term value, yet institutions rarely measure or act on these metrics.
Designing for women changes incentives and outcomes
Insights shared by ACCION and local providers illustrated how intentional design can reshape market behaviour.
Institutions that invest in gender-disaggregated data, persona development, and iterative product testing are better able to align products, messaging, and delivery channels with women’s needs.
Examples presented during the workshop showed that when design is intentional, outcomes follow. Digital lending products tailored to informal women entrepreneurs have reached millions of borrowers globally, with women representing a significant share of first-time users of formal finance. Similar innovations in Sharia-compliant digital finance are drawing new female users into the formal financial system.
Women-centred insurance products—particularly when delivered through trusted savings groups or bundled with credit—are also improving resilience and repayment outcomes.
These examples highlight a broader market systems insight: inclusion scales when commercial incentives align with social outcomes. When providers recognise women as a priority customer segment rather than a compliance requirement, investment in innovation becomes commercially rational.
The role of digital public infrastructure and community systems
Digital finance does not operate in isolation. Workshop discussions highlighted the importance of complementary systems, including digital identification, alternative data systems, agent networks, and community financial structures.
Innovations such as digital record-keeping tools for savings groups demonstrate how technology can strengthen informal financial systems rather than replace them. By improving transparency and documentation, such tools help women build financial histories that can eventually connect them to formal finance and unlock access to credit.
At the same time, participants emphasised that digitalisation without literacy, localisation, and safeguards risks reinforcing exclusion. Language barriers, consumer protection, cybersecurity, and social norms all influence whether digital tools empower women or deepen existing inequalities.
FSD Ethiopia’s catalytic role in shifting the system
Within this landscape, FSD Ethiopia’s role is catalytic.
The organisation’s women-focused financial product usage initiative seeks to address the systemic barriers preventing markets from effectively serving women.
This includes generating evidence to make women visible in financial data, supporting partners to redesign products and delivery models, strengthening digital and financial literacy, and convening actors who would not otherwise coordinate.
Programmes such as SAGE reflect a deliberate shift from measuring access to enabling sustained and meaningful use of financial services. This approach recognises that impact comes not from account ownership alone but from whether women can actively use financial tools to improve their livelihoods.
By working across demand, supply, and the enabling environment, FSD Ethiopia aims to crowd in private-sector investment, inform policy reform, and support innovations that can scale beyond pilot initiatives.
From access to agency
The workshop reinforced a shared conclusion: digital finance can be a powerful pathway to women’s economic empowerment, but only if markets are designed intentionally.
Access alone is only the first step. Empowerment depends on whether women can use financial tools to manage risk, grow businesses, smooth income, and exercise economic agency.
Achieving this requires better data, stronger collaboration, and sustained commitment from regulators, financial institutions, innovators, and development partners.
The challenge is not technological. It is systemic.
Read the full “Empowering Women Through Tailored Digital Financial Solutions” event report to explore the data, debates, and pathways shaping a more inclusive digital financial ecosystem for women in Ethiopia.
